How to Mark a Book
By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
From The Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941
You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to
persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to
persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most
efficient kind of reading.
I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.
You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours.
Librarians (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you
should. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have
to buy them. Most of the world's great books are available today, in reprint editions.
There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you
establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of
purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have
made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in
it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the
butcher's icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important
sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too,
must be absorbed in your blood stream to do you any good.
Confusion about what it means to "own" a book leads people to a false reverence for
paper, binding, and type -- a respect for the physical thing -- the craft of the printer rather
than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea,
to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking his claim by pasting
his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine library doesn't prove that its owner has a
mind enriched by books; it proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was
rich enough to buy them.
There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best sellers -unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The
second has a great many books -- a few of them read through, most of them dipped into,
but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would
probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical
appearance.) The third has a few books or many -- every one of them dog-eared and
dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to
back. (This man owns books.)
Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and unblemished a beautifully printed
book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I'd no more scribble all over a first
edition of 'Paradise Lost' than I'd give my baby a set of crayons and an original
Rembrandt. I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable
from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like
that of a painting or a statue.
But the soul of a book "can" be separate from its body. A book is more like the score of a
piece of music than it is like a painting. No great musician confuses a symphony with the
printed sheets of music. Arturo Toscanini reveres Brahms, but Toscanini's score of the G
minor Symphony is so thoroughly marked up that no one but the maestro himself can
read it. The reason why a great conductor makes notations on his musical scores -- marks
them up again and again each time he returns to study them--is the reason why you
should mark your books. If your respect for magnificent binding or typography gets in
the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.
Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you awake. (And I
don't mean merely conscious; I mean awake.) In the second place; reading, if it is active,
is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked
book is usually the thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the
thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three
points.
If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active. You can't
let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what
you have read. Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, Gone with the Wind,
doesn't require the most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be
read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich in ideas and
beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the
most active reading of which you are capable. You don't absorb the ideas of John Dewey
the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have to reach for them. That you
cannot do while you're asleep.
If, when you've finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know
that you read actively. The most famous "active" reader of great books I know is
President Hutchins, of the University of Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of
business activities of any man I know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes,
when he picks up a book and pencil in the evening, he finds himself, instead of making
intelligent notes, drawing what he calls 'caviar factories' on the margins. When that
happens, he puts the book down. He knows he's too tired to read, and he's just wasting
time.
But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your
own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves
them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences
you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those
reactions and sharpen those questions.
Even if you wrote on a scratch pad, and threw the paper away when you had finished
writing, your grasp of the book would be surer. But you don't have to throw the paper
away. The margins (top as bottom, and well as side), the end-papers, the very space
between the lines, are all available. They aren't sacred. And, best of all, your marks and
notes become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the
book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement,
disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with the
advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.
And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the
author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally, you'll have
the proper humility as you approach him. But don't let anybody tell you that a reader is
supposed to be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation;
learning doesn't consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself
and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands
what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of differences,
or agreements of opinion, with the author.
There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here's the
way I do it:
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Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful
statements.
Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to
emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may
want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It
won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will
be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the foldedcorner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in
developing a single argument.
Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the
author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book,
which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of:
recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind;
reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence
of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the
book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their
appearance.
The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy
bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and
making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline
the book, not page by page or point by point (I've already done that at the back), but as an
integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the
measure of my understanding of the work.
If you're a die-hard anti-book-marker, you may object that the margins, the space
between the lines, and the end-papers don't give you room enough. All right. How about
using a scratch pad slightly smaller than the page-size of the book -- so that the edges of
the sheets won't protrude? Make your index, outlines and even your notes on the pad, and
then insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of the book.
Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It
probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the
notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the
right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should be read quickly and effortlessly
and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading
is the ability to read different things differently according to their worth. In the case of
good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how
many can get through you -- how many you can make your own. A few friends are better
than a thousand acquaintances. If this be your aim, as it should be, you will not be
impatient if it takes more time and effort to read a great book than it does a newspaper.
You may have one final objection to marking books. You can't lend them to your friends
because nobody else can read them without being distracted by your notes. Furthermore,
you won't want to lend them because a marked copy is kind of an intellectual diary, and
lending it is almost like giving your mind away.
If your friend wishes to read your Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare, or The Federalist
Papers, tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat
-- but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.